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Texas Brigades summer camp registration beginsTexas Registration for the Texas AgriLife Extension Service's Texas Brigades camps this summer has begun. Youth are taught leadership skills and natural resources conservation at the camps, which are limited to 20 to 30 students from ages 13 through 17 in each camp, said Dale Rollins, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension wildlife specialist at San Angelo and the concepts originator. "The camps are designed to develop life skills such as critical thinking and team-building through fun and interesting activities that focus on a particular game species," Rollins said. "As I reflect on my career, the dividends I've witnessed from the Brigades camps are not only professionally rewarding, but they also stoke my fires daily to push for conservation education," he said. "And I believe those same sentiments apply to each and every one of the 100 or so volunteers who assist with the various camps. "A lot of high school students aspire to find a career in wildlife management, but the field has always been highly competitive. Participation in the Brigade camps offers them a chance to get not only a taste for such careers, but also to develop a network of contacts who can help them achieve their career goals. The Brigades network is one big family." Camp dates and locations: --11th Battalion South Texas Buckskin Brigade, Carrizo Springs, June 13 to 17. --18th Battalion Rolling Plains Bobwhite Brigade, Coleman, June 19 to 23. --13th Battalion South Texas Bobwhite Brigade, Campbellton, June 27 to July 1. --5th Battalion Bass Brigade, Santa Anna, July 12 to 16. --9th Battalion North Texas Buckskin Brigade, Albany, July 18 to 22. Parents love the program, said Helen Holdsworth, San Antonio-based Texas Brigades executive director. "We receive many positive reports back from cadets and parents about the Brigades. One father sent a letter recently thanking us for having such an influence on his daughter," Holdsworth said. The father wrote, "Her development, manifested by her newly-heightened initiative, competitiveness and motivation, is in large part to be attributed to her Brigade journey..." A young man who attended both the Bobwhite and Buckskin Brigades is attending the University of Alabama at Birmingham majoring in political science, Holdsworth said. "He received a 4.0 last semester and credits many of the lessons he learned at camp in helping him be successful in college. We are not just educating Texas youth about wildlife," she said. "We are developing the future leaders of Texas and the nation."
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